


untitled eight

by thedarknesswithin (babylxxrry)



Series: untitled [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:54:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28766646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babylxxrry/pseuds/thedarknesswithin
Summary: all these ghostscome streaming down and sometimes i wish i hadsomething else.-- siken
Series: untitled [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/981528
Kudos: 9





	untitled eight

**Author's Note:**

> hello  
> i return to this space  
> it's been a hot second, hasn't it?

she fills her days with work and friends and music and books and walks and coffee and usually, it’s enough to keep her mind occupied.

it’s the nights that do her in. 

she has blackout curtains in her room, but she rarely closes them anymore. there’s not much of a point in it when she rises with the sun (if she sleeps at all). and this way, the moonlight makes patterns on the floor. her cat snuffles in his sleep on his pillow next to hers. 

she sits cross-legged on the floor at the edge of the moonlight with a blanket draped over her shoulders.

she doesn’t often feel  _ lonely _ , as much as she is  _ alone _ , but sometimes it hits her in the chest like falling into water flat on her back and leaves her gasping for air. she remembers old, old summer days when she and her cousins and her friends would jump into the pond by the cabin and make competitions of who could get the farthest, or do a flip, or the other things kids like to do around docks and water. 

she misses that dearly, as little as she would actually like to do it again. and maybe, she thinks, it’s the companionship that she misses more than the water. it’s the knowledge that someone is  _ there  _ even if they’re fast asleep at 4am and won’t see her text until they get up in the morning at a normal person time. it’s the knowledge that, if she needs it, she can get up and pull shoes on and trudge a couple miles through the nippy air to someone’s house and let herself in to sit on their couch until she falls asleep. and it’s odd to not have that. it’s like missing a limb, in a way — or rather, like getting her wisdom teeth out.

she doesn’t  _ need _ people around, and she doesn’t need _ him _ specifically around, but she’s lived almost two whole decades with him by her side. mistakes and distance and growing up and frosty breaks aside, they have been each other’s closest confidants for so long. it’s different now. 

and it’s not bad, really, if she’s logical about it, because he’s off doing his thing and growing into himself, and she’s doing her thing and growing into her own person, but it’s just so  _ different _ when the promise of seeing each other is never just around the corner. seeing each other now requires flights and scheduling and complexities that were just never there before and it throws her out of her rhythm. 

it’s different. 

not bad, she reminds herself, because it’s not bad. it’s just so different. 

it’s the concept of it all, she thinks, that fucks with her brain the most. they aren’t growing apart, exactly, but now there are jokes and references and stories that they don’t share, and sometimes the silences when they call are more awkward than comfortable. 

it’s not bad, she reminds herself, because they can’t spend the rest of their lives intertwined with each other, because they know that would never, ever work. they know each other too well. they know each other’s ins and outs and ups and downs too well. both of them are incredibly stubborn and it would be far too easy to hurt each other if they were ever closer than best friends. no, they are much, much better off staying as best friends. it’s a hard lesson they’ve learned through the years. 

but sometimes she still wishes she could just call him and sit together quietly on the couch, watching some shitty movie while he murmurs a running commentary and she dozes off against his shoulder. 

she is alone now, as much as she isn’t. and it hurts in different ways than it used to. some of the old hurt is gone or changed because that is the way of hurting, and some of it remains (will always remain, she thinks), but she will get used to it. 

she always has and always will. 

her cat makes a little snorting sound in his sleep and she pushes herself up off the floor. her fingers and toes are chilly and her phone sits dark and silent on the nightstand. 

she tucks herself into bed and closes her eyes. 

sleep is no longer as elusive as it used to be. 

things are different.

//


End file.
